About Us - Our Team - Our Story

Creating healthier and happier lives

We restore trust and confidence in our client’s facilities and operations through a potent combination of science and nature.

Our Team

Susan co-founded Origen Air in 2019. Her 14 years leading high-stakes negotiations and litigation teams while running a real-estate company prepared her well for the CEO role at Origen Air. Susan’s desire to help the less fortunate resulted in her raising funds to purchase land and build a school in Siem Reap, Cambodia, in 2018. As CEO, she has grown her team from two to 16, raised over $1.2M, filed key patents, and is now launching the North American commercialization of Origen’s first product, The Sentinel.

With a fiery entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for disruptive innovation, Andrew has been on the front lines in the development of vertical farms, living walls, electric vehicles, water filtration, waste management, and alternative energy solutions. He possesses a strong background in economics and hospitality management. He has a strong knowledge of botany, irrigation systems, and the wholesale/retail plant industry.

Experienced instructor and mentor with a demonstrated history of working in the start-up and higher education industry. Skilled in Operations Management, Production Management, Lighting, Sound, and Live Events. Strong education professional with a CMA focused in Management accounting from the University of Victoria.

Our Story

Origen Air was co-founded in July 2019 by Susan Blanchet and Andrew Crawford. The plan was to convert a conventional living wall into a living, breathing air purification system for commercial properties. Our mission was to create meaningful health and productivity improvements to indoor air quality using nature as our secret sauce.

Susan’s 15 years of legal experience played a pivotal role in the successful acquisition of our plant-based IP from the University of Washington. Origen Air now holds the global exclusive right to distribute this IP within our proprietary air purification system.

The development of our MVP, The Sentinel, was stopped dead in its tracks by the global pandemic. Overnight, we experienced the loss of all prototyping, laboratory spaces and university professor engagements. Undaunted, Andrew and Susan expanded their office, hired a full staff of UVic engineers and business program graduates and got down to work.

During this busy time, co-founder and CTO Andrew, leveraged his knowledge of probiotics and surface disinfection from his days as an orchid nursery owner to launch a pandemic pivot of sorts. Their spin-off company Origen Clean was launched to assist Victoria-based businesses with a non-toxic, microscopic fogging service that prevented viral threats from persisting within built environments. Clients such as the Victoria International Airport and Saanich School District championed our technology and provided much needed revenue streams towards the bootstrapping efforts of our young start-up.

After 2.5 years, Origen Air has created strong ties with the Victoria community through a variety of channels. The first connection to the community comes in the form of hiring, training, and mentoring co-op business and engineering students from the University of Victoria. In total, we have hired over 15 students across multiple faculties of study. We have also maintained a strong cooperative relationship with Camosun College. Here, the Camosun Innovates program and it’s students have played a key role in executing testing and experiments on our offerings. In recent months, Origen Air furthered their reach within their hometown of Victoria, BC by deploying successful pilot projects across the city. We have created career connections between our young staff, universities, suppliers, our investors, loyal customer base and company supporters.

As Origen Air commercializes in Q4 of 2021, we continue to expand our team and facilities. We have created affiliations with universities in Indonesia, USA and Malaysia. We are well on track to deploy all 50 units by Q2 of 2022. Our triple-bottom line, clean technology solution will deliver strong returns for Origen Air, our customers, and our planet.